Elshan Ghasimi

Elshan Ghasimi (*1981 in Isfahan, Iran) is a master of the tar, a long-necked Iranian lute instrument, and of Persian classical art music, as well as a composer, performance artist and educator. She works in meeting spaces of tradition and modernity, West and East, music and other art forms. Language, music, physicality and dramatic expression as parts of a (cultural) whole form the basis of her work, which also embraces the visual arts - for example in the album, concert and exhibition cycle Elies Miniatures, in which Ghasimi shapes pieces from an estate into musical experience.

Her approach is greatly influenced by the tradition and practice of the radīf, the repertoire of Persian classical music, which is imparted from master to student through years of immersion and familiarisation and which she is the first female musician to reinterpret over the course of a large-scale project.